In many emergency situations it is of great importance to be able to quickly and accurately locate individuals within a large building. For example, in the event of a fire, public safety personnel may need to operate within an unfamiliar building on short notice, in conditions of poor visibility due to smoke or flame. Accurate location information is vital to coordinate rescue operations and ensure the safety of firefighters. Police or military personnel may be faced with similar circumstances, in which accurate and timely location information can help avoid friendly-fire incidents and coordinate action against a criminal or enemy force.
Individuals faced with an emergency involving immediate danger to life or health of themselves or a colleague need to be able to accurately provide their location to emergency/rescue personnel, preferably without human intervention to enable rescue in the case where the individual in need is incapacitated, or all attention must be devoted to his/her protection. In all these circumstances, rapid and automated acquisition of the location of an individual to within a few meters within a large building can be critical in saving lives.
In addition, there are time when an individual is in a rural area needs to be located in an emergency. A mobile device an individual may be carrying may not be able to communicate because of poor signal strength to the mobile device in the rural area.
Prior art methods of accomplishing such location do not simultaneously meet the requirements of rapid location determination, automation, and accuracy. Navigation employing conventional maps and visual observation or dead reckoning are not readily automated and thus require time and attention by a human observer. Manual navigation may be vitiated in the case where visibility is impacted by flame or smoke, or where personnel are under hostile fire and unable to establish their location by patient observation.
Enhanced 911, (E911) is a location technology that enables mobile, or cellular phones and other mobile device such personal digital/data assistants (PDAs) to process 911 emergency calls and enable emergency services to locate a physical geographic position of the device and thus the caller. When a person makes a 911 call using a traditional phone with wires, the call is routed to the nearest public safety answering point (PSAP) that then distributes the emergency call to the proper emergency services. The PSAP receives the caller's phone number and the exact location of the phone from which the call was made. Prior to 1996, 911 callers using a mobile phone would have to access their service providers in order to get verification of subscription service before the call was routed to a PSAP. In 1996 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that a 911 call must go directly to the PSAP without receiving verification of service from a specific cellular service provider. The call must be handled by any available service carrier even if it is not the cellular phone customer's specific carrier.
The FCC has rolled out E911 in two phases. In 1998, Phase I required that mobile phone carriers identify the originating call's phone number and the location of the signal tower, or cell, accurate to within a mile. In 2001, Phase II required that each mobile phone company doing business in the United States must offer either handset- or network-based location detection capability so that the caller's location is determined by the geographic location of the cellular phone within 100 meter accuracy and not the location of the tower that is transmitting its signal. The FCC refers to this as Automatic Location Identification (ALI).
In addition to traditional cellular telephones, advances in technology have expanded the number and types of devices that are capable of initiating an emergency call for service that is routed to the appropriate PSAP based on the caller's location. Devices include, but are not limited to: computer programs that are executed on computing devices (Soft Phone), cellular telephones that are capable of data communications, wearable embedded devices embedded into home appliances, intelligent building control and monitoring systems, and intelligent roadways. The concept of an “Internet of Things” will allow any connected device to initiate communications with another device, service, or person, including a system within a PSAP.
An Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) or drone, is an aircraft with no pilot on board. Essentially, a drone is a flying robotic aircraft. The aircraft may be remotely controlled or can fly autonomously through software-controlled flight plans in their embedded systems working in conjunction with Global Positioning System (GPS). UAVs have most often been associated with the military but they are also used for search and rescue, surveillance, traffic monitoring, weather monitoring and firefighting, among other things.
More recently, the unmanned aircraft have come into consideration for a number of commercial applications. In late 2013, Amazon announced a plan to use drones for delivery in the not-too-distant future. The service, known as Amazon Prime Air, is expected to deliver orders inside a 10-mile radius of a fulfillment center within 30 minutes.
There are many problems associated with determining a location of a network device and a caller who needs to place an E911 call or a person who sends a text to E911 in an emergency situation.
One problem is the network device and caller may be located in a remote area, rural area in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack when a local infrastructure may be compromised or an adequate communication signal not available to send an emergency message.
Another problem is that many E911 calls a misrouted to the wrong PSAP. This can delay the dispatch of emergencies services to the caller. Another problem is that existing mobile technology makes its difficult to accurately locate mobile devices.
Another problem is that triangulation based on time of arrival at multiple mobile-communications base stations (TDOA) has inadequate coverage and is insufficiently accurate unless supplemented by signals provided by local radios placed outside the facility by public safety personnel.
Another problem is that conventional radio-frequency-based location methods do a poor job of providing topological location within a building: that is, location relative to floors, walls, doors, partitions, stairways, and other features whose spatial extent is small but whose significance to a person's ability to move is great.
Another problem is that many wearable mobile devices are not “location-aware.” Location-aware devices are aware of their current geographic location. Mobile telephones and Global Positioning System (“GPS”) devices may be aware of their current geographic location. GPS devices typically determine their current geographic location by communicating with satellites. However, mobile telephones may only determine their current geographic location by communicating with a particular mobile phone interface or telephony switch that provides coverage to a geographic location such as a telephony “cell” but not an exact current geographic location within the cell.
Another problem is that it mobile devices are being allowed to send Short Message Services (SMS) text-to-911 messages to contact emergency services when an emergency occurs. The current physical location of such mobile devices sending text-to-911 messages needs to be determined.
Thus, there exists a critical need for a method of locating individuals making an E911 call from a network device in an urban or rural area that is rapid, automated, accurate, simple and inexpensive to employ, and does not require manual intervention from a person using a mobile network device to be located.